I'm trying to get some idea of the progress in bus building from the days of the wood/timber frame bodies to the steel framed in Australia? What year did bus and coach body frames started being built from the wooden frames to steel frames? Which company started first? Was it 1950s? 1960s? Photos welcome too.Thanks.

Update:Thank you to all of you for your replies.Some very interesting history there.

Last edited by Denv12 on Wed Sep 20, 2017 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In Victoria:H A Grummet & Son never made the transition and ceased building bus bodies in 1955.Martin & King built bus bodies for both private operators (a few) and the MMTB including the double deckers and AEC Mark III, the latter being metal framed. Their last bus was bodied in 1954.Cheetham & Borwick built metal framed buses for the MMTB in the 30s. They released one for private operators in 1942 but the war stymied that a bit. They next built metal framed buses in 1959 on the Bedford chassis and subsequent bodies were metal framed until they ceased building bus bodies in 1976.Symons & Fowler began building metal framed buses in 1953 and ceased building buses in 1959.R F Weber built bus bodies from the 20s but, as far as I know, it was not until that he started building buses at Peninsula BL in 1944 that metal framed buses were built. He ceased building buses in 1960.Ansair built buses from 1945 and built their first metal framed bus in 1949 (the Transett). They ceased building buses in 1995, although their designs continued for another 4 years with subsequent owners.CAC built buses from 1946 to 1980 and all were metal framed.Freighter built buses in Moorabbin from 1954 to 1967 - all metal framed.Noreng built buses from 1957 to 1962, all composite bodies.Mee built buses from 1962 to 1988 and all were metal framed.R V Piper built buses from 1958 to 1966 and all were metal framed.W A Newnham built buses from before WW1 with timber frames, but didn't build many buses up until 1947 when they then specialised in vans. They formed a partnership with CCMC in 1967 and went to metal frames. Infact, their first buses in this relationship were framed in Sydney and finished off in Melbourne.There were a few other smaller bus builders but I have no info about their construction method, although given that they were all pre-1960, the likelihood is that they used composite framing.

Syd Wood (1962) slightly outlasted Properts (1961) in building buses. I'd be interested to know when Watt ceased building composite framed buses. In Melbourne, Noreng built their last bus ( composite framed) in 1962.

I don't think so. Some of their last bus bodies were for TAA - 10 Leyland Tiger Cubs and 10 AECs - and they had composite bodies. MBA was owned, from 1943, by White Trucks and they then started building buses, having previously built car bodies. They built their last bus in 1959.

GM wrote:System Improver - Did MBA build many buses after they moved to Flemington with White Trucks?

They were in Parramatta Road Camperdown and then moved to Flemington near the end. Here is an advert from T&BT from July 1957. According to the deliveries in T&BT, they were building less than ten buses per year with the last bus going to TAA (an AEC) in August 1959.

boronia wrote:I recall reading somewhere that Properts or Syd Wood were the last builders to use wooden frames for buses in NSW

According to an article in T&BT (April 1959), Propert's made (at least) one all metal body, on an AEC chassis for Parramatta Bus Company. T&BT list about half a dozen subsequent deliveries before Propert's disappears from the delivery page.

And Syd Wood (as Eswood) is still in business making commercial dishwashers as it was in the 1930s before it went into bus bodies as a "sideline"! Does anybody have a record of which was the first Syd Wood bus?

Re Properts - The reason for the local body work, as noted by John Dunn in ‘Comeng: A History of Commonwealth Engineering Vo1 1: 1921-1955’, was that during World War I there were few ships and little space to import entire cars to Australia so chassis only began to arrive here. By the 1920s the enormous growth in demand for cars led to the development of a local thriving motor body building industry. As well as Smith & Waddington Ltd other Sydney firms included: R.L. Archer at 112 Parramatta Road; the Missenden Road Body Works Ltd; Propert Motor Body Co. at Newtown; and Lou Fitch’s body works and E.E. Agate at Summer Hill. During this time there were some 90 different car makers advertising 300 model variations. GM

GM wrote:Re Properts - The reason for the local body work, as noted by John Dunn in ‘Comeng: A History of Commonwealth Engineering Vo1 1: 1921-1955’, was that during World War I there were few ships and little space to import entire cars to Australia so chassis only began to arrive here. By the 1920s the enormous growth in demand for cars led to the development of a local thriving motor body building industry. As well as Smith & Waddington Ltd other Sydney firms included: R.L. Archer at 112 Parramatta Road; the Missenden Road Body Works Ltd; Propert Motor Body Co. at Newtown; and Lou Fitch’s body works and E.E. Agate at Summer Hill. During this time there were some 90 different car makers advertising 300 model variations. GM

It was actually the tariff regime that encouraged local body production. The tariffs on imported motor vehicle bodies were very high in order to encourage local manufacture. The tariffs on chassis were lower as these were not initially made here. Later, of course, with governments encouraging local manufacture, a complete motor industry emerged after WW2.

Re Syd Wood I must have been harking back to another (mis)interpretation of the company's history that I read somewhere. The dishwasher business dates from 1932.

GM wrote:Re Properts - the Missenden Road Body Works Ltd; Propert Motor Body Co. at Newtown; and Lou Fitch’s body works and E.E. Agate at Summer Hill. During this time there were some 90 different car makers advertising 300 model variations. GM

Would you happen to know where these were located? I would be interested in photographing the buildings if they have survived.

Ben

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